By Efrat Shapir
Obviously, history is not boring. Even Canadian history. So why is it that students find this subject in particular so dull? Do you remember anything from your own history classes?
It is difficult to make history classes relevant if you focus solely on dates, events, or the actions of long-dead politicians. If I even try to teach the battles of the First World War, for example, I can expect eyes to roll deep into students’ sockets. The classic teacher’s argument, of course, is that the battles of the Great War are key to understanding the impact of that conflict as an important building block of Canadian nationhood. So students must learn about them, right?
Well, not really.
Relevance is what makes history come alive
What makes history come alive is the way the past is relevant to our present life, and how it shapes our future. The study of history changes just as much as our news feed does. If trench warfare is worth learning about, it is because it is relevant.
I was thinking of challenging my students this year to compare how we remember the soldiers of World War I with our present national effort to acknowledge the atrocities of the residential school system. There are many similarities between the two, with the major difference being that many Canadian soldiers volunteered to fight, whereas residential schools were forced upon Indigenous communities. To draw that comparison, students need to study the past. Learning how and why Remembrance Day became “a thing” helps today’s students understand why the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation matters.
Finding the past that matters
I am not kidding myself. The past is a hard sell for many students, and these connections can be difficult to grapple with. Nonetheless, the goal of a history class is to find the past that is relevant. The teacher’s task is to figure out what in the present matters to students, so that they can make interesting connections with the past. At AVRO, we care about students’ interests, and we use the past that is relevant to them.
That is exactly how we teach Canadian History Since World War I. If this sounds like the kind of classroom your teen would thrive in, come and see it for yourself.